Modeling Big Data based Systems through Ontological Trading

One of the great challenges the information society faces is dealing with the huge amount of information generated and handled daily on the Internet. Today, progress in Big Data proposals attempt to solve this problem, but there are certain limitations to information search and retrieval due basically to the large volumes handled, the heterogeneity of the information and its dispersion among a multitude of sources. In this article, a formal framework is defined to facilitate the design and development of an Environmental Management Information System which works with an heterogeneous and large amount of data. Nevertheless, this framework can be applied to other information systems that work with Big Data, since it does not depend on the type of data and can be utilized in other domains. The framework is based on an Ontological Web-Trading Model (OntoTrader) which follows Model-Driven Engineering and Ontology-Driven Engineering guidelines to separate the system architecture from its implementation. The proposal is accompanied by a case study, SOLERES-KRS, an Environmental Knowledge Representation System designed and developed using Software Agents and Multi-Agent Systems

Enhanced matching engine for improving the performance of semantic web service discovery

Web services are the means to realize the Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) paradigm. One of the key tasks of the Web services is discovery also known as matchmaking. This is the act of locating suitable Web services to fulfill a specific goal and adding semantic descriptions to the Web services is the key to enabling an automated, intelligent discovery process. Current Semantic Web service discovery approaches are primarily classified into logic-based, non-logic-based and hybrid categories. An important challenge yet to be addressed by the current approaches is the use of the available constructs in Web service descriptions to achieve a better performance in matchmaking. Performance is defined in terms of precision and recall as well-known metrics in the information retrieval field. Moreover, when matchmaking a large number of Web services, maintaining a reasonable execution time becomes a crucial challenge. In this research, to address these challenges, a matching engine is proposed. The engine comprises a new logic-based and nonlogic- based matchmaker to improve the performance of Semantic Web service discovery. The proposed logic-based and non-logic-based matchmakers are also combined as a hybrid matchmaker for further improvement of performance. In addition, a pre-matching filter is used in the matching engine to enhance the execution time of matchmaking. The components of the matching engine were developed as prototypes and evaluated by benchmarking the results against data from the standard repository of Web services. The comparative evaluations in terms of performance and execution time highlighted the superiority of the proposed matching engine over the existing and prominent matchmakers. The proposed matching engine has been proven to enhance both the performance and execution time of the Semantic Web service discovery

Combinatorial Auction-based Mechanisms for Composite Web Service Selection

Composite service selection presents the opportunity for the rapid development of complex applications using existing web services. It refers to the problem of selecting a set of web services from a large pool of available candidates to logically compose them to achieve value-added composite services. The aim of service selection is to choose the best set of services based on the functional and non-functional (quality related) requirements of a composite service requester. The current service selection approaches mostly assume that web services are offered as single independent entities; there is no possibility for bundling. Moreover, the current research has mainly focused on solving the problem for a single composite service. There is a limited research to date on how the presence of multiple requests for composite services affects the performance of service selection approaches. Addressing these two aspects can significantly enhance the application of composite service selection approaches in the real-world. We develop new approaches for the composite web service selection problem by addressing both the bundling and multiple requests issues. In particular, we propose two mechanisms based on combinatorial auction models, where the provisioning of multiple services are auctioned simultaneously and service providers can bid to offer combinations of web services. We mapped these mechanisms to Integer Linear Programing models and conducted extensive simulations to evaluate them. The results of our experimentation show that bundling can lead to cost reductions compared to when services are offered independently. Moreover, the simultaneous consideration of a set of requests enhances the success rate of the mechanism in allocating services to requests. By considering all composite service requests at the same time, the mechanism achieves more homogenous prices which can be a determining factor for the service requester in choosing the best composite service selection mechanism to deploy

Coordination in Service Value Networks - A Mechanism Design Approach

The fundamental paradigm shift from traditional value chains to agile service value networks (SVN) implies new economic and organizational challenges. This work provides an auction-based coordination mechanism that enables the allocation and pricing of service compositions in SVNs. The mechanism is multidimensional incentive compatible and implements an ex-post service level enforcement. Further extensions of the mechanism are evaluated following analytical and numerical research methods

Value Creation through Co-Opetition in Service Networks

Well-defined interfaces and standardization allow for the composition of single Web services into value-added complex services. Such complex Web Services are increasingly traded via agile marketplaces, facilitating flexible recombination of service modules to meet heterogeneous customer demands. In order to coordinate participants, this work introduces a mechanism design approach - the co-opetition mechanism - that is tailored to requirements imposed by a networked and co-opetitive environment